In the News (Thu 14 Dec 17)

WithdeanStadium is an athletics stadium in the Brighton suburb of Withdean which is currently the home ground of football team Brighton and Hove Albion F.C. It was voted the fourth worst stadium in the UK by The Guardian [1].

The club's former stadium, the Goldstone Ground, was sold for redevelopment in 1997 by the board of the time (none of whom have any involvement with the club anymore).

The stadium is managed and maintained under contract from Brighton and Hove city council by D C Leisure Management.

However, Withdean is far from suitable for League football, let alone Championship football, hence the club have been pushing for a 23,000-seat stadium of their own for over seven years now.

Adams says the lack of a permanent stadium and facilities is the reason why he trades the Second Division title race for the Premiership relegation dogfight.

Stadium supporters are outraged and mount an immediate campaign to persuade Lewes District Council to reconsider the Cabinet Committee’s decision – on the grounds that it is not supported by Lewes residents and that the costs that could fall on council tax payers would be excessive.

Clubs In Crisis - Brighton(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)

With a railway station adjacent to the stadium as well as a dedicated bus and coach-park, the emphasis is on public transport, building on the innovative model developed for WithdeanStadium.

Compelling evidence that a stadium for Brighton and Hove is a matter of national concern was presented at the recent inquiry by the national football and sporting bodies.

Ploughed for the growing of crops, the field is subjected to the noise of the trunk road and railway, and is overlooked from the west by the university campus.

www.clubsincrisis.com /BrightonReasons.asp (2236 words)

English Football - Walkers Stadium(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)

The Walkers Stadium is a footballstadium which plays home matches to English football team Leicester City F.C. The all-seater stadium, inaugurated in July 2002, holds 32,500 and is named after Leicester City’s sponsors Walkers.

The stadium was completed on time in the summer of 2002, ready for Leicester to take up residence for the start of the 2002/03 season.

The £37 million cost of the new stadium, combined with relegation from the Premiership and the collapse of ITV Digital meant that Leicester went into administration shortly after moving to the new stadium.

Withdean has a capacity of 7,000, and is made up of temporary stands on two sides, with no roof covering, and one small roofed stand along the side of the pitch.

Upon moving to Withdean, Dick Knight and the Chief Executive Martin Perry, initiatated a comprehensive planning application for a new state-of-the-art, 22,500 all seater purpose-built community stadium, to be constructed in between the Brighton and Sussex Universities, on a disused field immediatly next to the A27 at Falmer, on the outskirts of Brighton.

Despite the careful design of the stadium to blend in with the environment, and innovative plans to allow use of the stadium with the minimum of disruption, the residents of the nearby Falmer village, along with Lewes District Council, objected to the plans.

Posted - 30/12/2005 : 10:34:22 AM I'm not sure of future plans for the stadium, but it's worth noting that the majority of the seats currently there are temporary, and hired each season by the Albion.

Albion have spent a fiar amount on the stadium, which is right and proper considering they have used it, and the understanding has always been that permanent improvemnets would be just that and thus save the Council funding those improvements.

Withdean could be a real asset for Brighton youth and community groups.

The stadium is therefore cut into the ground to a maximum dig of approximately 10 metres to the south west and merges with existing ground levels to the north east.

Whilst the desirability of a new stadium from the Clubs perspective can be appreciated, given that they are currently apparently able to satisfy the Football Leagues requirements with the stadium at Withdean, the "need" for a new stadium has to be questioned.

Withdean was dismissed in the Analysis because it was deemed unsuitable for a permanent development bringing it up to the standard of the Football League for clubs in Divisions 2 or 3, which require seating for a minimum of 6,000 spectators, of which 2,000 must be under cover.

In terms of ticketing arrangements, the restricted capacity at Withdean means that a limited number are made available to away supporters, and, as such, away fans should deal directly with their own ticket office.

WithdeanStadium is situated in a residential area, and therefore pubs and restaurants are at a premium.

However, for some of the best eateries, pubs and bars in the country, away supporters would be better off arriving a little earlier and venturing into the city centre, before using their travel vouchers to get to the ground.

Unable to play at their own ground WithdeanStadium, due to the tenancy of Brighton and Hove Albion, the club gorund-shared Horsham’s Queen Street ground for their first season in the Combined Counties League, eventually finishing 5th.

On 17 June 2003 however, it was announced that Withdean would once again be allowed to compete in the Combined Counties League, and continue to ground-share with Worthing.

In the meantime Withdean will continue to run a youth set-up only, whilst retaining the hope of one day returning to WithdeanStadium and starting again.

It was an all-ticket match, but then they invariably are at WithdeanStadium, an athletics complex holding 7,000 where Brighton are now into their fifth season of residence.

The public inquiry into the proposed new stadium at Falmer, able to seat 22,000, is due to wind up next week, when the report will be forwarded to the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, for a decision in his role as minister for the Department of the Environment and the Regions.

Withdean's modest, if attractive, setting did nothing to deter Grimsby, who had much the better of the opening half.

The walk was only about 5 minutes to the WithdeanStadium, and I managed to persuade a steward to let me in to take some pictures of the stadium.

He had to radio through to his supervisor, but the response was more than friendly and the club seemed pleased that I was taking an interest in their facilities.

As the bus made its' way to the Withdean I noticed that are some fantastic looking houses in the vicinity of the stadium, and I suppose the upper-class residents wouldn't want to suddenly be faced with 10,000 or-so noisy football fans every fortnight.

Supporters of the Championship football club described the stadium go-ahead, given by the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, as "the best result in Albion's 103-year history".

Seven years after the turnstiles closed at the club's now-demolished Goldstone Ground home in Hove, and despite fierce opposition from local residents, Mr Prescott ruled that the stadium could be built at Falmer, on the outskirts of the city.

His decision ends months of doubt for thousands of fans who have watched their team play at the suburban Withdeanstadium, which has only 7,000 seats, since 1999.

I used my fathers 'Black Cat' camera and went along to WithdeanStadium, which at that time was a zoo.

Withdean Grange was situated between the London Road and the railway embankment.

In the early 60's I and many other GPO trainees learnt overhead cabling skills there - at the rear of the exchange building were rows of miniature telegraph poles and even a mock house that we used to run cables to and from.

The opponents to the WithdeanStadium improvements have withdrawn their legal objections to the Planning Permission (see below), clearing the way for immediate construction work on the Temporary Stands.

Parking restrictions near the Stadium are expected to be enforced.

The Stadium itself is quite a long way from the houses and is quite well placed to avoid any nuisance to local residents.

Home, for now, is the WithdeanStadium, a tree-fringed athletics stadium in one of Brighton's most sedate suburban areas.

Walking down quiet, countrified roads to watch a match seems incongruous, as does the fact that the majority of fans are housed at the sides of the pitch, with minimal seating behind one goal and none behind the other.

We have worked with designers who were part of the Huddersfield McAlpine and Sydney Olympic stadium projects, and we want the stadium to have the sort of visual flair you would expect of Brighton.

The football club has been without a permanent home since it sold its Hove ground in 1997 and has been playing at Withdeanstadium in Brighton since 1999.

The University of Sussex has maintained a neutral stance on whether a new stadium should be built at Falmer since the site next to the University of Brighton was first identified as a possible location in 1998.

The University is most directly concerned with arrangements for managing transport, not least because existing campus car parks would be made available for some parking on match days.